Two Things Worth Browsing Today

The graphic is from here: it shows the changes in relative compensation between executives and average workers in the US over the last fifty years. Click on it to get an enlarged picture.

Keeping that image firmly in mind trot on over to Will at Potlatch, and consider his sharp eyed linkage of bankers compensation and last night's student protests.

"If bankers had just managed to keep a limit on their already-extreme levels of personal appropriation, then the financial crisis may not have turned into a fiscal crisis. Banks may even have remained a private industry, independent of the state. If George Osborne were just willing to treat higher education as a public good amongst many - in need of a harsh squeeze, but no more (he is, after all, a Tory) - then Churchill's statue may not be dawbed in graffiti this morning. But at a certain point, you have to consider the possibility that going too far is an economic and political strategy in its own right."